Autumn Leaves

by Tessa Lunney

  “As do you.”

  “War’s not so conducive to health.”

  “Grief neither.”

  “Almost the same thing, really.”

  “Almost.” I returned his gaze.

  “Button.” His tone was soft and happy. The sounds of the bar floated around us—French and English and Spanish and Flemish, old voices and young, curling with the smoke of pipes and cigarettes and the roaring fire.

  “I’m here now, Tom-Tom.”

  * * *

  “July last year. That’s when I last saw you, Button. When you were about to leave for the coast.”

  We were sitting on my windowsill, facing each other with our backs against the frame, wrapped in blankets and smoking into the night. Tom’s long legs filled the entire width of the window but he left just the right amount of space for me to sit in between them. The lights of the city shimmied and blinked.

  “I begged you to join me, Tom.”

  “The Hungarian coup couldn’t wait. I did ask, but the legitimists said no.”

  “If only they had waited, they might have been more successful.”

  “I doubt it. The people of central and eastern Europe are sick of kings. They want revolution.”

  “Does revolution want them?”

  “No. It just installs new kings, even if the new king is of the people’s choosing.” He pulled my foot into his lap and traced the burgeoning hole in my stocking with his thumb. “It’s been hell.”

  “Without me? I understand…”

  “That wasn’t hell. That was simply… purgatory, endless dull gray London, with none of the champagne-soaked nights I’d come to rely on for release. No, it’s the… it’s as though I’m being punished for fleeing the war in 1917. I didn’t see the Armistice here in France, so I’m forced to travel all the countries where the Armistice made no difference and the fighting continues. Russia, Hungary, Germany, Russia… now Greece—or Turkey—I’ll just call it Smyrna, it’s easier—fire and blood, wailing women, children slaughtered like the little lambs they are…”

  “Christ Almighty.”

  “He wasn’t anywhere, nor Mohammed. The air smelt of barbeque—wood ash, rosemary, and flesh—and death, you remember, fresh blood and shit and that sting in the nostrils of burnt rubber, of smoking metal, of other people’s fear-soaked sweat.”

  My gorge rose and I swallowed. “I remember.”

  “They’re fighting over a border town, over their version of Abraham’s God… I can’t care anymore.” He had been rubbing the hole in my stocking as he spoke, and he leant down to kiss my toe. I murmured his name and he pulled me, foot first, so I was right in front of him, tangled and tucked up against him. He kissed my hair and breathed in deeply.

  “Thank God you’ve come back, Button.”

  “I’m here to stay.”

  “In Paris?”

  “Too many nosy relatives in London.” I turned my face to his chest to kiss him. “I’m here for you, whenever you’re in Paris.”

  “I wonder if Old Buffer would let me relocate.”

  “From my brief encounter with him, he still has the idea that Paris is a sink of iniquity, you know, lust and gluttony and not a shred of work done. I could tell by his leer.”

  “He’s very leery. I think he has a bad eye.”

  “He definitely has bad teeth. Probably bad breath too.”

  “Oh, definitely bad breath.”

  A breeze fluttered around us. Tom pulled me closer and I reached up to kiss his neck. I could hear him exhale, feel his heart beat a bit harder, feel his limbs relax.

  “Just to sit here with you, Button, just to watch the lights of Paris as they bow to the night…”

  We sat like that, communicating tenderness with our bodies, and watched the neighborhood lights blink out one by one by one.

  15

  “baby blue eyes”

  I dreamt of kissing him, of course. Just kisses, it was the war, our uniforms were in the way all the time, I couldn’t undo all my buttons, he couldn’t undo his puttees, our laces and straps tangled together and we could do nothing but kiss. I woke to find that we were holding hands, my hand dangling over the side of the bed, his reaching up above his head so that our fingers were entwined. The day was misty outside the window, we were in a cloud-bound tower, we were a world unto ourselves.

  I watched him as he slept. His black hair had rejected all pomade to flop over his face. He was thin, his jawline so sharp it could chop wood, his cheeks sinking, his eyes sinking as though retreating from the horror they had faced and seen. Even his fingers had lost their muscle; his huge hands showed no hint of the soldier, shearer, or horseman he had been. The war had returned for us both, but whereas I was infected by ghosts and memory, he had watched blood flow. I felt a sudden connection, a bridge—to take care of him would be to take care of myself, that I would only get better if he also got better. I squeezed his fingers; he opened his eyes to look at me, upside-down, from his mattress on the floor.

  “Button.” It was a sigh. “Is it breakfast?”

  “Those bells? I think it’s lunch already.”

  “But they’ll serve us coffee, right? Your breakfast people? The old woman who fusses like a favorite auntie, her grumpy husband…”

  “They’d serve me coffee in their nightcaps if I needed it.”

  “I thought so.” He yawned. “I went there once you know, when I stayed here while you were away. It wasn’t the same. Everything tasted stale and tepid.”

  “I do bring a certain zest to daily life…” But that sentence ended in a shriek as he grabbed my foot and tickled me. It was all I could do not to slide off the bed and into his arms.

  * * *

  Madeleine Petit welcomed us warmly and let us order anything we liked. We were on our second coffee and third cigarette before I got up the courage to speak.

  “You have to know…” I couldn’t go on, not with Tom smiling at me with such open-hearted pleasure. I reached over and covered his eyes.

  “A surprise, Button?”

  “A shock. I can’t look at your ocean blue eyes and tell you.”

  He removed my hand with a frown. “I’m ready.”

  I took out the envelope of photos Fox had sent me and placed them in front of Tom. I watched him inspect the envelope, reach in and get the photographs, the rippled feelings in his face as he saw himself in uniform—shock, disbelief, hurt, anger, fear—I could only remind myself to breathe by smoking.

  “Where did you…” But he realized as he spoke. “You’re working for him again. Fox.”

  I nodded.

  “Why, Button?”

  “You’re holding the reason.”

  “Where did he get these?”

  “I almost don’t want to know, except that it could save you.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Don’t you, Mr. Arthur?”

  He looked at me, and from his stunned, angry expression, I knew that he knew. He needed help to clear his name and working for Fox was probably the only way. He gave an exasperated groan and held his head in his hands, looking at the photos, then stood up so fast he knocked his chair over as he strode out the door. I knew he wouldn’t go far—he’d left his coat and his cigarettes—but I could feel his fury, his frustration, his despair. I could even hear his yell as he let some of it out. I didn’t want to work for Fox again either, but the longer Tom remained Mr. Arthur, the harder it would be for him to remove the charges hanging over his head. Madeleine raised her eyebrows but I could only shrug. Everyone else turned back to their newspapers.

  I finished my cigarette and let my coffee, no longer hot, soothe my tongue. Tom was all passion and action, so different from cold, remote Fox. I had to admit that he’d be a perfect help in this mission. Reporters were allowed to go everywhere and talk to everyone, and he was probably privy to all sorts of political gossip. He might even know who the princes were.

  But first he had to tell me what he remembered about these photos. H
e couldn’t remember anything when I helped him to escape in 1917, he simply shivered when he was awake and screamed when he was asleep. But bad memories are a bit of shrapnel in the blood, they have a way of pushing to the surface. It was almost exactly five years since I had got him out of his Paris hotel hidey-hole and onto a ship home, complete with forged discharge papers supplied by Fox. Now Fox had these photos; Tom needed to search the catacombs of his memory to find something, anything, to help us.

  He loomed in the doorway for a moment, dark as a shadow, and he barely looked at me as he walked back to his seat. His forehead had a sheen of sweat on it but his arms were goose-pimpled. He wouldn’t look at me until he had lit a cigarette and blown a plume of smoke past my ear. Then he glared at me with his stormy blue eyes, his face too pale even for a chilly autumn day—I could tell straightaway.

  “What have you remembered?” I asked.

  “In the mud… German voices above me, some speaking English to me with an almost-English accent… you know, telling me to be still, stay calm… the smell of cordite and fresh blood and old bodies and myself, shit and fear and pain…” He raked back his hair with a trembling hand. “And one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Fox.”

  “My boss.”

  “And mine.” He had to look away then, probably from the shock and fear on my face. “Or was. In the war. As I was walking just now, I remembered what I remembered while you were away.”

  “Yes?” My voice sounded strangled.

  “He was the officer who gave me my mission. The one that sent me over the lines at Passchendaele.”

  “Fox sent you behind enemy lines in 1917, on the mission that led to your charge of treason? Fox?”

  “I didn’t know who it was at the time. He was just a British officer, speaking with my CO, the Saint, and a couple of other officers. My assignments came from all sorts of officers…”

  “Wait, assignments, mission—you did intelligence work?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “You didn’t say!”

  “I assumed you knew… yes, of course, how else could I have been that far forward of the front line?”

  “I heard stranger tales from the men I nursed. I assumed you were knocked out and the line moved around you.”

  “In that mud pit, no one was moving anywhere.”

  I felt his expression must mirror my own, a kind of appalled surprise that this fundamental part of our shared story was only just now being told.

  “And?”

  “I worked it out later from your descriptions of him. Silver hair on a young face, deep smooth voice, stood very straight, the scar on his cheek—and then I remembered the pips on his uniform, he was RAMC—and then I remembered that he called me Thompson before I had been introduced… it must have been your Dr. Fox.”

  The edges of my vision started to swim and I felt queasy. Fox had been between us for so long; I’d had no idea. I couldn’t even smoke my cigarette and it burnt itself into an arc of ash.

  “You know, Button, these photos…”

  “He took them.” He must have; oh, the bastard.

  “I reckon so. Or had a hand in having them taken.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t have got mud on his uniform! No, he ordered for them to be taken.”

  “But how did he know I’d end up behind German lines?”

  “Because…” Something broke inside me, something sank. “No…”

  “He must have, Button. He must have ordered it.”

  “How, though? How? He’s so King and Country! He wouldn’t know any Germans…” Except he would, as he was German. I swallowed hard against my rising nausea.

  “But didn’t you tell me—”

  “Yes. His family came to England from Germany when he was little. His birthname is von Fochs.”

  “So, then.” Tom reached over and took my hand. “Your fingers are freezing, Button!”

  “So, then, you’ll help me.” Tom nodded as he blew on and rubbed my fingers, trying to get some warmth into them. “I have a new mission—these photos are just… an ‘advance payment’ if you will. An enticement.”

  “An entrapment.”

  “I think entrapment will be my task, not my fate.” I fished the letter out of my bag. “Read the mission.”

  He kept hold of my fingers as he read, rubbing them absentmindedly with his thumb, frowning at the paper. I stared at the basket of bread on the counter, at the coffeepots, at the rows of colored liqueurs that lined the mirror behind the counter, anything to settle the rising anger, fear, pain, whatever was causing the nausea and the accompanying jiggle in my right leg.

  “Which poet is this?”

  “Shelley. The whole mission is about radical toffs. I have to find—”

  “Princes and houseboys?”

  “Quite. Fox wasn’t as subtle this time.”

  “But just as gross. What do you need from me?”

  “What do you know about fascism?”

  “Like what’s-his-face, the bloke from your last mission—”

  “Hausmann.”

  “That’s the one. You’re still following this?”

  “Apparently so. Hausmann is clearly the ‘houseboys’ the mission refers to. He was recruiting for the Freikorps last year. The Freikorps have close ties with these Fascists.”

  “I remember.”

  “I need you to keep an ear out for what might be happening with this group.”

  “My life has been a round of communism, socialism, monarchy, back to communism, all soaked in national pride… I haven’t heard about the Fascists since I was in Poland last year, when the Germans were still making a fuss. The rest of eastern Europe is staring down Lenin.”

  “What about Germany? Italy?”

  “Germany faces the east too and there was that little matter of the 1918 uprising in Berlin…”

  “You must have heard something on the road. Other reporters in the hotel bars, like Hemingway, the mates you make to share the gossip and the risk—what do they say?”

  “You make us sound like pigeons on the barbed wire.”

  “Those messenger pigeons are the unsung heroes of the war.”

  He tapped the letter. “This ‘black shirt’ clue. Have you heard of Benito Mussolini?”

  “Italian?”

  “Yes. Lots of the ‘other reporters in hotel bars,’ as you call us, knew him. He used to be a reporter.”

  “But what is he now, if he used to be a reporter?”

  “Leader of the Italian nationalists, called the Fascists. Other reporters have been saying that he invented fascism, from some Milanese nationalist group or other.”

  “And they wear black shirts, like the Freikorps wear brown shirts?”

  “That’s the word around the hotel bars. Lots of chat about how the clash of empires is being replaced by the clash of ideologies… not that most papers want to hear about the reporters’ analysis. But these professional observers, well, they have a bit of an investment in what grows in the place of a toppled empire. But, as I said, my life’s been dominated by black bread and bathtub vodka. I haven’t had much chance to eat spaghetti.”

  “We can get you some here in Paris.”

  “Or we could go to Italy. I’d love to see the Colosseum.”

  “And I’d love to get lost on Venice’s canals. But not yet.”

  He sighed. “Not yet.” He gave a kind of start.

  “What?”

  “Button… does Fox have a brother?”

  “I don’t know. He seems to have sprung up whole and complete in British RAMC uniform and Savile Row suit.”

  “I met someone on the road… it was last year, I was just returning from Russia, again, and all I could think about was getting a hot bath and a hearty meal… but there was another reporter, at least he said he was a reporter, on the train out of Munich. He called himself a German but had a perfect British accent, said he learned it at school in Britain. He… yes, he wore a brown shirt…”<
br />
  “A military uniform?”

  “So many do, still, they’re the only clothes they own. It’s not at all unusual in most places in eastern Europe. But it was his bearing. He was definitely an officer, but his uniform was like that of a private, and he said he was going to London to see his brother. I asked him, ‘You’re German, but your brother’s English?’ and he replied, ‘Silvius always preferred mother to father, so he remained English when the war started. I was hoping to see my nephew too.’ ”

  “Silvius, he said?”

  “Yes, and this man’s name was Cassius. The name was so odd that it stuck in my mind.”

  “Fox’s name is Silvius. Silvius Atticus Frederick Fox—or Friedrich von Fochs, as he was born. Not that he ever told me this. I met someone during the war who knew him at school; the man was killed by a sniper minutes later.”

  “It might be worth doing a bit of spy work on Silvius.”

  “And Cassius. And a nephew! Whose son? Fox’s son, or is there another brother, a sister?”

  “A nephew means a mother somewhere too. Sister… or Fox’s wife?”

  “No.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, he didn’t have one during the war.”

  “How do you know?”

  I couldn’t look at Tom, the innocent question with the disappointed, hurt tone soon to follow. I lit a cigarette, though my throat was starting to hurt, though my tongue could taste nothing but ash and fire.

  “Oh, Button…”

  “He never said, but surely…”

  “And he’s still after you?”

  “He wants me to…”

  “He’s still after you.” He took the cigarette from my hand. “I’m not worth it, Button.”

  “Of course you’re worth it.” I pushed the photos toward him. “We’re so close.”

  “Maybe I like being Mr. Arthur.”

  “Maybe you do, but it’s not safe. Someone will recognize you one day and then it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to the firing squad.”

  “The Saint is dead, my other OC is dead, it can’t…” His face fell. “It can.” He took a long drag on my cigarette before handing it back. “Right. Fox.”